Thanks for the swag ol' buddy

A big monkey sized 'Thank you!' goes out to my old college buddy Joe for burning and sending me not one, not two, not three, but twelve CDs.

He sent me CDs from the following groups:

• The B 52's
• The Clash
• The Go Go's
• Devo
• Elton John (some from when his music was still good)
• Blondie

I sent him some CDss of new legally downloaded music I've gleaned from various websites and he sent me an email and asked me what if anything from his vast collection of classic rock CDs he could send me. So I told him anything from the groups listed above would be cool. I figured he'd send me a track or two from each group, enough to fill one CD, but oh no, he send me full length CDs. And multiple CDs from most of the groups listed above. I'll be in '80's music heaven and I'll be saying "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" for the next few weeks to come.

Thanks for all the great new music Joe ol' buddy! You rock hard my man.

Love the members, hate the company

The Flickr Nazi's shit canned my main account, the one I paid my hard earned cash to obtain, on their website, which means all my scans and photos I had on there are now lost. Luckily for me I took all my family photos off it and I put them on my Facebook account. It pisses me off though that I lost all those scans I did of vintage stuff, of book covers, of old yearbooks, and I lost all the photos I had taken including all the pictures from our holiday party, the various festivals around here, and all the other ones as well.

I'll never ever pay them to open a 'pro account' ever again. What I will do is I'll clog them up with hundreds of little accounts and I'll back up all the scans I put on there by posting the same scans to my other blogs Monkey Foto and Monkey Scan or to my Facebook account.

Despite my hatred for the company, I still love all my old Flickr friends and I'll be looking up all the ones I can remember and adding you all to one or another of my accounts.

I love you Facebook-UPDATED

I'm glad my friend Pam who used to write the blog Memoirs of a Working Mom got me to get into Facebook.

Using Facebook over the past few months has given me a deeper appreciation for all of my blog buds. I've also caught up with some old friends from Knoxville, my old improv comedy group, and it's brought back into my life some old friends from college. I'm loving it that I am catching up with folks I knew over 20 years ago. We all may never get together anywhere else besides Facebook but hey, that's good enough for me.

If you're on Facebook and on my blogroll and you haven't 'friended' me yet then what the hell are you waiting for? Get on the stick people, chop chop. I'll go ahead an apologize in advance if you send me a drink or a gift or do one of those Facebook apps that I'm not into, otherwise I rock at being a Facebook friend.

Viva Facebook!

UPDATE: If you're on Facebook and you can't find me it's because I'm onthere under my real name. If you want to friend me please send me an email to monkeymuckATgmailDOTcom with the words 'Friend me Monkey' in the subject line and I'll shoot you back an email with my real name.

Swag update

My old college buddy Joe sent me some cool swag. He picked me up a couple of packs of these:
How nifty is that?

I hooked back up with Joe through our mutual college buddy Yvonne and I hooked back up with Yvonne through Facebook. We're all burning up teh internets now with emails and Facebook posts and chats. I know when he invented the internet Al Gore was only trying to make the dream of a free porn delivery system real but I'm loving this side effect of Al's invention.

Thanks for the swag Joe! You rock buddy.

That's the way the cookies crumble

As we set out for the cookie making festivities in Knoxville yesterday it began to snow. We got a few flurries at first and then the sky opened up and it poured snow as we made our way down the highway. Near whiteout conditions prevailed for many many miles but I did not let it stop me, okay so maybe I exaggerate, but I swear at points the snow was sticking to the interstate and or blowing like crazy. I drove on knowing that there were many cookies to be made, many people to see, many bad jokes to be made, and a few beers to be drunk at our destination. The snow and bitter cold were not going to keep us from attending one of our beloved holiday traditions. And so boys and girls, after a little over an hour and a half of heroic driving, which was mixed in with a good bit of whining on my part, we arrived at our friends Todd and Donna's place.

We said our hellos to our hostwho was 'kickin' it West Coast style' as my peeps in the street say. And found our hostess who was, as you can plainly see, already drinking. Have no fear though, we hobbled her so that she could not drive later. No need to thank me, I'm just doing my part as a conscientious citizen.

Whoever said that strangers are just friends you haven't met yet has never been to a cookie making party at the Covert's house. There were a ton of new people at this years party and as usual I forgot their names almost as soon as they were introduced to me. Screw it though, lets meet some of the new folks. The cute gal in the plain apron was working too hard to put up with my nonsense. The little gal behind her I'm pretty sure she just wandered because she was enticed by the smell of baked goods. The woman washing dishes I met last year. She thought she'd make me remember her name by wearing an apron with her name on it. Ha! I foiled her plans by staring her her boobs when I talked to her. That'll teach her to try to make me learn when I don't want to.

The blurry gal tried asked me to stop taking her photo. I got a pretty strong vibe that she was in the Witness Protection program or something but I'm an inconsiderate bastard and I took her photo anyway. Look at the guy and the gal in the background, they weren't making cookies, they were eating them! Egad! If you look above the beardy guy's head you can see that Donna has Santa's balls in a jar on top of that shelf. No wonder the guy comes only once a year. Zing! Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week. Try the Tofurkey and don't forget to tip your waitress after the show. Here's more new people making cookies. The only one who's name I remember is the gal on the left, her name is Sarah. I hope she forgets that I used this unflattering picture of her by the time next year's party rolls around. In addition to remembering Sarah's name, I remembered the names of some other people as well.
This is Donna's boss Jaycene (I'm not sure if I'm spelling her name right but come on people, I did good just to remember it!). You can power a small subdivision with the energy produced from Jaycene's smile. I knew Jaycene from my days when I was in Knoxville's only performing improv comedy group. She'd come to see the show and even if we sucked on the nights she came she would always tell us we did a good job.

I also remembered this gal's name. Her name is Sparky. Isn't she cute? The gal with the arrows pointing to her is Cathy. For the second year in a row Cathy is the MVP of the party. She baked her booty off and made sure things ran like clockwork. I'm pretty sure I named her MVP of the party last year so once again she'll receive either a lovely gift pack valued at over $10,000 or she'll get the sincere thanks of a smart ass party goer.

But of course the main purpose of the party is to make cookies. Here's some gratuitous cookies shots: Ha! I just threw that last one in to see if you were paying attention. When I saw people rolling these little balls of dough up I began making all sorts of ball jokes. I'd repeat a few here but this is a family blog god damn it. And there's no fucking place for smutty jokes about nuts. Speaking of nuts though, when the spicy nuts came out of the oven I put some on my chin and I said, "Hey look, I've got hot nuts on my chin! Who among you hasn't had hot spicy nuts on your chin at one time or another?" Some people didn't spprecitate my 'humor' and they fled down stairs where they enjoyed the song stylings of Todd and his buddy who's name I forgot. Todd is a very talented guitar player and singer. He digs Elvis Costello maybe even more than I do and we both appreciate Elvis's lovely Canadian wife Diana Krall. Mmmmmmm, Diana Krall, hubba hubba. He sang and played a bunch and his buddy backed him up on that thing in his lap. It's called a Zen Drum and it's got a bazillion drum sounds in it, all you have to do it to hook it up and press the big black buttons.

All in all we had a good time, as we do every year. It's nice seeing our old friends and meeting so many new friends. It's even nicer getting to take a big tin of freshly baked cookies home at the end of the night. Thanks for having us Donna and Todd! Happy Christmas you crazy kids!

I'd be quite the catch but they won't chase me

Since I jumped into this whole Facebook thingy a bit more I've come back into contact with some old college friends. And just like in college they fall into two distinct groups, one group of them I partied and hung out with, the other I didn't. I've been exchanging emails and all sorts of memories with my old party pals but the folks I didn't party with I have hardly exchanged much with except for the cursory greeting and 'friend adding.'

The thing I find funny about all this that a couple of my old college friends have become ministers and as soon as they found out I was a card carrying atheist, and the card I carry is my library card, they stopped communicating with me. No more messages on my Facebook wall, no emails, nothing. I'm grateful they don't, but you'd think they try to save my soul or something. You'd think they at least be cordial on the off chance that I might turn to them to find out about the good news about Jeebus H Christ. But just like in college it turns out that the religious people only want to be be around others who think like them or who they think they can brainwash into thinking like them.

I'm glad I've reconnected with my old party buddies even though we live hundreds of miles apart. And as far as the god squadders who I've reconnected with, the way I feel about them is just about the same way I felt about them in college, which is to say, I can take them or leave them and mostly I leave them.

Oh, and I'm glad that I connected with some of my blog pals on Facebook because it helps me get to know you a little better and we share a different side of our selves on there. But if I don't return good karma, or throw more "snowballs," or pass you "drinks," then I apologize. I'm still a Facebook rookie and I don't spend enough time there to be all hip to the latest advances in Facebookism.

I wish she were my Granny

I'm not sure if this blog is really written by an 80 yr old woman or not, nonetheless I've still got a blog crush on it. I found it through a friend from college that I reconnected with on Facebook. It turns out that this old friend of mine has thrown off the shackles of conservatism (we went to a very small conservative christian college) and has become a tree hugging vegetarian. I always knew she had it in her.